Before the break we had the opportunity to see Neil Shubin for the first time, in the Great Transformations DVD. Shubin, an "Evo/Devo" bio guy, spoke about the tinkering that evolution does as it plays, not with animals' bodies, but with the underlying machinery - their genes. As we learned, their are a few "master control" genes - that control the timing, and structural development of key body parts and segments (head, thorax, abdomen, legs, antennae, etc.). There is a universal body plan - but the details can change over time to allow for evolutionary adaptation to occur in organisms. In this was Philip Gringerich showed the world that modern whales evolved from ancient wolf-like creatures. (That is a picture of Lyudmila Trut and one of her foxy dogs on top of this entry)
A famous experiment took place about 50 years ago that attempted to condense millions of years of evolution into just a few years. Scientists took a pack of wolves and bred them for temperment, their goal being to "recreate" the transition from wild wolves to domesticated dogs. Their premise was simple: breed the dogs, isolate/raise the pups that seemed must comfortalbe around humans, and repeat for multiple generations. Interesting idea, but were they successful?
I'd like you to read this short article Taming The Wild on National Geographic's website: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/03/taming-wild-animals/ratliff-text
Once you read the article, I'd like you to share your thoughts - specifically citing at least two ideas directly from the article that you found interesting, enlightening, or just plain cool.
Then I'd like you to address the big idea that is implicit in this article: Is this a good (beneficial) thing? Does this type of research portend great advances? Or, like therapeutic cloning, is this opening a door that some will see as potentially benficial while others will view it as "playing God", and potentially dangerous? Or is it just good, solid scientific research?
9 comments:
Though over time we have domesticated dogs and cats doing this to foxes seems a bit cruel. Maybe i dont see that with dogs or cats because it has never been any other way during my lifetime but foxes are wild animals. You see them when you take a walk in the woods but you dont reach out your hand for them to smell--they dont have human contact because theyre not supposed to. They live together in their societys.
On the other hand, i can also see how it could be valuable to see the changes of wild to domestication. The foxes that are bred to be human-friendly dont seemed too harmed by it; theyre happy and like the humans so as long as there treated well i can rationalize it into being a good thing in my mind.
HOWEVER! what i do have a serious problem with is when they bread the foxes to be the most hostile and vicious and then kept them confined to cages. "straight out of a B-grade horror film: hissing, baring their teeth, snapping at the front of their cages when any human approaches." Well no duh! Not only that but now they spend their entire lives locked in cages smelling the fear of everyone who walks by them. They also bread the maternal right out of them. That mother was so agressive she was unable to feed her young. In my opinion that means that under Darwins Theory of Evolution that yound wouldnt have survived to bread another even more agressive fox and the over-agression would have disapeared in time.
"They didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox," says Hare. "But they ended up getting a smart fox." I think they are just learning from humans just like dogs would. A nice fox could still do something that humans dont like and the foxes would recognize our punishment of them or that we were displeased. Of course they would take cues from us thats how babys learn too. Babys, in essence, dont know anything when they are born and they learn what to do from our reactions. so, i think a fox is like a baby in that way but what do i know? I have done a million studies on smart foxes and dumb foxes and nice foxes and mean foxes.
It seems to me that, perhaps, the research team got lucky when they chose foxes as their test subjects. I think that there is a significant possibility that there are some animals that are better suited for domestication than others. It would explain why we were able to domesticate horses, but not zebras, despite many attempts. I found disturbing though, the idea that "they [are a] lot [like] golden retrievers, who are basically not aware that there are good people, bad people, people that they have met before, and those they haven't." It seems to me that we are robbing animals of their ability to defend themselves.
Because of these two ideas, I am rather ambiguous as to whether or not what these scientists are doing is "good." I certainly don't like the idea of people "playing God," but I am not entirely sure that that is what is going on here. Or, if it is, then breeding dogs is also "playing God." What I would be interested in learning, is if these new foxes have DNA that is as different from wild foxes as dogs DNA is from wolves. Right now, it seems to me that no harm can come from domesticating foxes. People have far stranger pets than foxes.
My one real problem with what the article had to say was what Brian Hare said. "They ended up getting a smart fox." This statement is, to me, completely absurd. They didn't breed a smart fox at all. Foxes were always smart. There's a reason that they appear as cunning villains in children's tales and that we say "sly like a fox." His statement is completely boundless, the foxes were no more or less smart, they were simply more eager for human attention, so they were more attuned to our wants.
I do agree with Sydney, though, in saying that is cruel and wrong to have bread foxes for aggression. It sounds to me that they tried to use this as a control, but a control is not a separate experiment with opposite results. There was absolutely no need to breed aggressive foxes. they should, however, have had a control group of foxes that were not bread for any specific traits, it is possible that simply by living with humans these animals may have become more docile over time.
The only problem I have with this entire process is the "dogs" that are "aggressive." They domesticate two types of these wolf-dogs: tamed and aggressive. When the article talked about the dogs that were domesticated to be aggressive, these dogs were just left in cages to be looked upon as the "evil twins." That seemed incredibly inhumane to me. OK. Now that I begin to talk about this, I seem to have a strong opinion. I completely agree with what Aidan said, that they are "robbing animals of their ability to defend themselves." I see it as they are using these wolves as test dummies in a way. And when some of these wolf-dogs are domesticated as aggressive, they are called "evil twins," just because they have developed to be and have the traits that a usual wild wolf would have! I guess I am just angry at the use of the name "evil twin" in this article as well.
But it is interesting to think about how we "tamed" our inner wild beast. In some ways, I believe we haven't. I could go into a long rant about how humans are still incredibly animalistic. It is in our ancestry and human nature, which in many ways are one in the same.
Lastly, Williams-Beuren syndrome is incredibly interesting. I have never heard of this syndrome but I would really be interested to meet a child/adult that has it. I think it would be a crazy coincidence if this syndrome in humans has nothing to do with WBSCR17 gene that is believed to have something to do with the domestication of wolf to dog.
Molly
Jan is Molly. I need to work on signing in on the right Gmail account.
What's the difference between rats and foxes? For me, when it comes to scientific research, I dont think there is one. If this was an experiment done on rats or mice we wouldn't question the ethics of breeding for a trait. If we decide that mice are ok to experiment on, I don't think there should really be a difference with a fox.
In addition, I think this research is extremely valuable, possibly in ways we don't yet know. Many important discoveries have come from genetic research. Yet we still know so little compared to what we might find.
On another note,
One of the things that interested me the most was the Williams-Beuren syndrome piece. As I was reading I kept thinking about how the idea of a domestic phenotype translated into humans. The WBSCR17 gene was just that. This also made me think about our relationship to primates.
Going on the idea that we "domesticated" ourselves from chimps, then we should have at some point developed a domestic phenotype. This may be a wild mental tangent, but what if our differences from chimps (lack of hair, height, brain capacity etc..) originally started as a domestic phenotype. As we became domesticated our appearance changed. Because of the new societies formed, we selectively bred ourselves for these traits because we associated them with our newfound social abilities. Over time we diverged as species, and the traits were continued, and Bang! Humans!
(just a thought)
I just want to quickly note that it is not at ALL kind to "bread the foxes" - one should bread the chicken breast and saute it delicately in butter, wine, and garlic.
You can, however, "breed" the foxes and then say how they were bred.
Cheers -
Mr E
HAHA Mr. Engler now I'm just hungry. All you have to do is replace the "chicken" with tofu and we're good to go :)
anyway...
Reading the prompt for this week, I knew that it would be a hard one to answer. This is turning into more of an ethics course on this blog! Nothing is wrong with that though, I do love thinking about these things. The main question that I take away from Mr. Engler’s prompt is: Is it good to make such advances such as these, or is it too close to “playing God”? I feel like this is the main point and this is what I focused on when reading the article.
First of all, this article does bring up the question, but I feel as though I would have to go through much more research until I answer it appropriately. My answers are just based on opinion instead of fact because of this.
To put it simply: I find it hard saying that this is “playing God” because one cannot know what the destiny for the human race is. This is confusing, but think about it: if creating a different species of animals seems to be what we are doing in science and technology, then maybe this is our destiny from “God” (just because we are already using this example). On the other hand, is it unhealthy to create our own creations without letting nature take its course?
I think that this main question can be traced as far back as we humans can remember. If we didn’t make creations we would still be sitting in a cave somewhere with no clothes or warmth. The REAL question is: Where is the line drawn between survival and excess? Is creating different species excess or survival? Maybe, if we use this science for treatments then it actually serves an important purpose. But I do think that just creating because we can create is closer to excess...
“Ultimately, the biggest payoff of the research may come from finding similar genes in the most thoroughly domesticated species of all: human beings. ‘Understanding what has changed in these animals is going to be incredibly informative,’ says Elaine Ostrander, of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH.” If the changing of DNA is for informative and strong causes I believe that it is a good thing and many good things can come from this. I think it is only when doing things without a clear cause becomes a little problematic.
“Human beings are not simply domesticated chimpanzees, but understanding the genetics of domestication in chickens, dogs, and pigs may still tell us a surprising amount about the sources of our own social behavior. That's one reason the fox-farm research being conducted by Kukekova is underwritten by the NIH.” Though I do not believe that breeding animals just to see the difference between “tame” or “aggressive” is right, I believe that this could have some beneficiary side effects. To me, it is all about the desired goal. If it is just for “excess” then I do not think this is the best method, but if it is for treatment or helpful information, I feel that this is a solid discovery. This is a hard subject and hard to choose a side, but this is how I currently feel.
One of the ideas that I liked the most in the article is that the fox's behavior is influenced both by genes and by chemical signals in the brain. I was under the impression that being tame was simply a genetic trait in animals like cats and dogs. The other one I liked was the theory of whether the difference between wolves and dogs was similar to the difference between chimps and humans. If you really think about it, men and dogs are both mild-mannered and friendly on the whole, so I think this theory has some ground.
As to whether these experiments are dangerous or not, I believe that they aren't dangerous, but only if we don't expose our creations to civilians. In other words, they must avoid all contact with nature. We have already messed up the environment enough.
Ben
One thing that I found interesting in the National Geograpic article was the fact that as the foxes are bred the later generations start to show different physical characteristics such as different colored coats, spots on the coats, and the floppy ears. I wonder why not only the fox's personality changed, but their physical appearence too.
It is just also crazy to think that wild animals that come from little to no human contact can go to being a loving lapdog. Changes in personality like that are huge changes. It's also strange to think that some animals can be selectivly bred to be tamed, but others can't. For example in the article the fox's can be tamed, but zebra can not be bred like that after numerous attempts.
I don't think that breeding animals like this is a bad thing. No harm is being done to the animals, and it could potentially lead to a new beneficial house pet. And selling the fox's so that they can have a better home is a good idea and at the same time it will be raising money for the studies. I think this is a good scientific project.
-Marley
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